CinqueTerre!!!

Remember Florence? There is a huge monumental cathedral in the middle, the Duomo. This is from the top, a beautiful view, well earned after the climb up there.

The rest of our time spent in Riomaggiore (the Southernmost town of Cinqueterre) was great... but I think we like the more northern town, Vernazza the best. Here are a few pictures...

That's a fancy bottle of champagne, I'll have you know. Opened only for the celebration of the sunset in Riomaggiore. ;)

The hike to Vernazza was amazing! And it kicked our butts. I think we were the only people who opted to hike our packs for the 4 hour hike of hills and stairs... apparently, most people take the train, and do a day hike to see the trail and the other cities. Wusses!!! They don't know how to earn their cheesy-pasta dinner.

That little peninsula with buildings that you see in the background? That is Vernazza. The cutest town of them all... loved it! And a very tired and cute Paulo makes the pic worth posting...

The last few days in Cinque terre were spent getting a tan. The beaches there were great, and again we confirmed with eachother that the medeterrainian ocean has the perfect clarity, temperature and color.

View from the window of our room!

We hiked without our packs on our last day, to see the one remaining city of five (Monterosso) that we had yet to see... it was nice, but a bit overpopulated and touristy. Known more for the beaches. We went back to Vernazza for dinner, to a place way up the road away from the 'good views' that we had stumbed upon earlier. The owners and waiters were twin brothers, one more talkative than the other, both with a sense of humor akin to good quality cartoons. They gave us a free pastry in the morning to entice us to come back, and when we did the food was AMAZING and the entertainment (our twin comedy waiters) couldn't have been better. While one was talking to us, the other came up behind him holding up a paper upon which was written: "blah blah blah CRAZY -->". We loved it.

Sometime on that day my watch broke.. just stopped ticking, probably needs a new battery. which was okay for a relaxing day on the beach (especially since we happen to be in a town where the clock chimes every 30 min to tell you what time it is! Uncommon for italy to even find a clock on display...) , but the next day we had to catch a 5am train to start our 4-train trek to Venice. By some stroke of luck, we happenned to have a room with a view of said clock tower, so we could look out the window to see hwat time it was. So, that's what we did. Every hour, or half hour, all night. We made our trains (the first one was 20 min late, darnit!), and the rest of our train ride progressed without incident, but also without brevity. Currently we are arrived at our 'campsite', similar to the one we stayed in in Florence, which has a bar, market, restaurant, pool, GYM, and we were upgraded to a cabin with a private bathroom at no extra charge. Life is good... Paul is sleeping, and we have laundry spinning in the dryer. Tonight we go into Venice, to see the floating (and sinking) city. Arrividerci!!! ( see ya later!)